Organizing for Society: A Typology of Social Entrepreneuring Models

Abstract

In this article, we use content and cluster analysis on a global sample of 200 social entrepreneurial organizations to develop a typology of social entrepreneuring models. This typology is based on four possible forms of capital that can be leveraged: social, economic, human, and political. Furthermore, our findings reveal that these four social entrepreneuring models are associated with distinct logics of justification that may explain different ways of organizing across organizations. This study contributes to understanding social entrepreneurship as a field of practice and it describes avenues for theorizing about the different organizational approaches adopted by social entrepreneurs.

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By 2016, SOS Group, the largest social enterprise group in France, was facing new challenges. In November 2015, the group had released its strategic goals for 2020. It aimed to double its turnover and headcount by that time, which would make SOS Group one of the largest social enterprise groups in Europe and in the world. Jean-Marc Borello, founder of the organization, knew SOS Group faced the choices of growing organically or through acquisition across activities, as well as in France or globally. By 2016, SOS Group already operated in 20 countries, and was contemplating entering 10 new countries by 2020. It also considered entering new sectors, such as culture. While Borello thought that aggressive growth was needed in the current context, some within the group wondered if that was the right way for SOS Group to measure and scale its social impact. Compounding these issues, Borello, whose opportunistic acquisition strategy had shaped SOS Group throughout its life, was considering retirement in the coming years. Under these circumstances, how could SOS Group achieve its strategic goals, while keeping its key values intact at a time when its governance would also change?

Ramarajan, Lakshmi, S. Dimitriadis, Matthew Lee, and Julie Battilana. "Blurring the Boundaries: The Interplay of Gender and Local Communities in the Commercialization of Social Ventures." Working Paper, August 2017. View Details

We explore the antecedents of the addition of the first woman to the boards of directors of entrepreneurial ventures. Building on research on resource dependency, we propose that new ventures are most likely to add the first woman to their boards at three developmental moments– board founding, fundraising, and the IPO– as a consequence of shifting alignments of resource control. A critical contingency to changes at the time of these milestones is the presence of resource holders who value the inclusion of women. We draw on an extensive handcrafted dataset on the boards of 2,425 U.S.-based new ventures to test these predictions. Our findings reveal that the first woman is likely to be added at the time of board formation if the founder-CEO is a woman and at the time of fundraising if the venture capital investment firm has a senior female partner. They also show that ventures are likely to add a woman to their board at the time of the IPO if they have not yet done so, but are unlikely to add a second. Our findings have implications for research on gender and entrepreneurship, women on boards, and the sociology of markets.